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No need for slime panic: it’s not going to poison anyone

The school summer holidays are fast approaching and, for some reason, this always seems to get people talking about slime. Whether it’s because it’s a fun end-of-term activity, or it’s an easy bit of science for kids to do at home, or a bit of both, the summer months seem to love slimy stories. In fact, I wrote a piece about it myself in August 2017.

The article is illustrated with lots of pots of colourful commercial slime pots with equally colourful names like Jupiter Juice. It says that, “exposure to excessive levels of boron could cause irritation, diarrhoea, vomiting and cramps in the short term,” and goes on to talk about possible risks of birth defects and developmental delays. Yikes. Apparently the retailer Amazon has removed several slime toys from sale since Which? got on the case.

The piece was, as you might expect, picked up by practically every news outlet there is, and within hours the internet was full of headlines warning of the dire consequences of handling multicoloured gloopy stuff.

Before I go any further, here’s a quick reminder: most slime is made by taking polyvinyl alcohol (PVA – the white glue stuff) and adding a borax solution, aka sodium tetraborate, which contains the element boron. The sodium tetraborate forms cross-links between the PVA polymer chains, and as a result you get viscous, slimy slime in place of runny, gluey stuff. Check out this lovely graphic created by @compoundchem for c&en’s Periodic Graphics:

The Chemistry of Slime from cen.acs.org (click image for link), created by Andy Brunning of @compoundchem

And so, back to the Which? article. Is the alarm justified? Should you ban your child from ever going near slime ever again?

Nah. Followers will remember that back in August last year, after I posted my own slime piece, I had a chat with boron-specialist David Schubert. He said at the time: “Borax has been repeated[ly] shown to be safe for skin contact. Absorption through intact skin is lower than the B consumed in a healthy diet” (B is the chemical symbol for the element boron). And then he directed me to a research paper backing up his comments.

Borax is a fine white powder, Mixed with water it can be used to make slime.

This, by the way, is all referring to the chemical borax – which you might use if you’re making slime. In pre-made slime the borax has chemically bonded with the PVA, and that very probably makes it even safer – because it’s then even more difficult for any boron to be absorbed through skin.

Of course, and this really falls under the category of “things no one should have to say,” don’t eat slime. Don’t let your kids eat slime. Although even if they did, the risks are really small. As David said when we asked this time: “Borates have low acute toxicity. Consumption of the amount of borax present in a handful of slime would make one sick to their stomach and possibly cause vomiting, but no other harm would result. The only way [they] could harm themselves is by eating that amount daily.”

It is true that borax comes with a “reproductive hazard” warning label. Which? pointed out in their article that there is EU guidance on safe boron levels, and the permitted level in children’s’ toys has been set at 300 mg/kg for liquids and sticky substances (Edited 18th July, see * in Notes section below).

EU safety limits are always very cautious – an additional factor of at least 100 is usually incorporated. In other words, for example, if 1 g/kg exposure of a substance is considered safe, the EU limit is likely to be set at 0.01 g/kg – so as to make sure that even someone who’s really going to town with a thing would be unlikely to suffer negative consequences as a result.

The boron limit is particularly cautious and is based on animal studies (and it has been challenged). The chemists I spoke to told me it’s not representative of the actual hazards. Boron chemist Beth Bosley pointed out that while it is true that boric acid exposure has been shown to cause fetal abnormalities when it’s fed to pregnant rats, this finding hasn’t been reproduced in humans. Workers handling large quantities of borate in China and Turkey have been studied and no reproductive effects have been seen.

Rat studies, she said, aren’t wholly comparable because rats are unable to vomit, which is significant because it means a rat can be fed a large quantity of a boron-containing substance and it’ll stay in their system. Whereas a human who accidentally ingested a similar dose would almost certainly throw up. Plus, again, this is all based on consuming substances such as borax, not slime where the boron is tied up in polymer chains. There really is no way anyone could conceivably eat enough slime to absorb these sorts of amounts†.

These arguments aside, we all let our children handle things that might be harmful if they ate them. Swallowing a whole tube of toothpaste would probably give your child an upset stomach, and it could even be dangerous if they did it on a regular basis, but we haven’t banned toothpaste “just in case”. We keep it out of reach when they’re not supposed to be brushing their teeth, and we teach them not to do silly things like eating an entire tube of Oral-B. Same basic principle applies to slime, even if it does turn out to contain more boron than the EU guidelines permit.

In conclusion: pots of pre-made slime are safe, certainly from a borax/boron point of view‡, so long as you don’t eat them. The tiny amounts of boron that might be absorbed through skin are smaller than the amounts you’d get from eating nuts and pulses, and not at all hazardous.

Making slime at home can also be safe, if you follow some sensible guidelines like, say, these ones:

BUT, there is also ” Category I: Dry, brittle, powder like or pliable materials” and the value there is the much higher 1,200 mg/kg. Which begs the question: does slime count as “pliable” or “sticky”? It suggests to me that, say, a modelling clay product (pliable) would have the 4x higher limit. But surely the risk of exposure would be essentially the same? If 1,200 mg/kg is okay for modelling clay, I can’t see why it shouldn’t be for slime. In the Which? testing, only the Jupiter Juice product exceeded the Category I limit, and then not by that much (1,400 mg/kg).

Also (the notes are going to end up being longer than the post if I’m not careful), these values are migration limits, not limits on the amount allowed in the substance in total. Can anyone show that more than 300 mg/kg is able to migrate from the slime to the person handling it? Very unlikey. But again, don’t eat slime.

† This is not an invitation to try and prove me wrong.

‡ I suppose it’s possible that someone could sell slime that’s contaminated with some other toxic thing. But that could happen with anything. The general advice to “wash your/their hands and don’t eat it” will take you a long way.

I have been researching slime recipes and the alleged dangers of Borax, and came to the same conclusions as you present in this article and the previous one. However, I think others are still uncomfortable using the Borax recipe for kids’ programs (at libraries) and prefer the one with glue, a tiny bit of sodium bicarbonate, and buffered saline contact lens solution, which of course contains boric acid/sodium borate.

I follow the chemistry of the original Borax recipe, but can you explain why the addition of the sodium bicarbonate is required when using the contact lens solution? I’ve tried, and it won’t work without it, but my 30 year-old, little used minor in chemistry is failing me to explain why. Thanks!

I’m not certain, but my guess (having done no research!) would be to increase the pH a little. The contact lens solution is buffered which means it resists pH changes. Good for contact lens-wearers – you wouldn’t want your contact lenses to be sitting in a solution that was too acidic or too alkaline. But I think the pH needs to be slightly alkaline to make the slime. The bicarb probably overwhelms the buffer (it’s quite a lot of bicarb with small amount of lens solution) and pushes it out of its neutral range into alkaline.